here - 75 Years of Collecting - Vancouver Art Gallery

Hand Vote
The show of hands in a public space is
the oldest and most direct form of
democracy — the self-management of the
commons — how do we organize what we
share, so we can go on sharing it? 1
If two things define global politics in 2011,
they are the Arab Spring uprisings through-
out the Middle East and the Occupy
movement in North America and Europe.
Although the two movements have fundamental
differences, they share similar impe-
tuses: a sense of injustice, a demand for
political and societal reform, a desire for
more equitable distribution of wealth and
resources, and a renewed conviction that
collective action can indeed effect change.
In Vancouver, the Occupy protests took
place on the grounds of the Vancouver Art
Gallery for over six weeks in the fall of
2011, leaving an indelible impression on the
city. Several months later, a new public artwork
by San Francisco- and Berlin-based
artist Kota Ezawa was raised a few blocks
away at Offsite, the Gallery’s location for
temporary, site-specific public artworks.
While these two events were not directly
related, there are interesting connections
between them.
Ezawa’s Hand Vote is a large-scale wooden
tableau depicting a group of figures with
their hands raised in unison. The group is
unidentifiable — they could be citizens in
a town hall meeting or students in a university
classroom, members of parliament
or a religious group — we don’t know for
certain. Yet the simple gesture of raising
one’s hand signifies an icon of democracy:
the vote.
Stacked in layers as if in a pop-up book,
the figures are cut out of flat panels of
plywood. The tableau towers above the
sidewalk, at a height of over 6 metres,
assuming a monumental scale. The sculpture
is sited in the centre of the Offsite
LEFT: Hand Vote, 2012 (detail)
space, framed by two walls and surrounded
by a shallow pool of water, casting reflections
of the figures. The strong grain of
the Douglas Fir wood stands in for the
skin tones of the faces and hands while
the other details are painted with brightly
coloured enamel. The flat, wooden construction
of the piece is evocative of a
stage set or façade — one imagines that a
performance or film shoot is about to take
place. While the front of the work has a
bright, glossy finish, the back of the construction
exposes the rough supporting
structure, suggesting perhaps that the
status of democracy is fragile and in need
of constant reinforcement.
The starting point for Hand Vote was a
found image — a generic, stock photograph
of people voting. Ezawa meticulously recreated
the image through a digital drawing
process, stripping down the photograph
to only essential shapes, lines and colours.
By eliminating details, the work refers
less to a specific group of individuals
and more to a general sign of a collective
body united by a common purpose.
Importantly, Ezawa maintained the basic
structure and framing of the source image,
cropping the hands and faces of the figures
as in the original, underscoring the
relationship of his process to photography.
This is typical of the artist’s previous work.
Often using well-known images from the
history of photography, film and popular
media, Ezawa’s pared-down renderings
speak to the iconic status of photography —
despite the simplified, almost cartoon-like
quality of the cut-outs, the source image
is still recognizable. In this way, Ezawa’s
work is a potent comment on the role of
photography in shaping our perception of
reality, the spectacular nature of the media,
and the limits of memory.
In the past year, events such as the Arab
Spring and the Occupy movement restored
a sense of political purpose to the act of
gathering in public space. Consequently
images of crowds, especially those in
protest, have circulated widely around the
ABOVE: Consensus, Occupy Vancouver, October 15, 2011. Photo: Stephen Collis
globe via social media platforms and
news outlets: people gathering in public
squares, people raising their hands in the
air, people bearing handmade signs with
declarations. The demand for change
is being made visible quite simply by
gathering en masse in the public realm,
and broadcast to the world through the
signifying image of the crowd.
In particular, the simple act of raising one’s
hand — a gesture intimately and symbolically
tied to the idea of democracy — has
taken on new significance in light of these
events. In a discussion about the relationship
between art and politics in the
context of the Occupy movement, poet
and critic Stephen Collis writes:
The use of hand signals has been one
of the distinctive aspects of the Occupy
movement — especially the consensusexpressing
“sparkle fingers.” (There are
countless photographs of occupiers with
their hands in their air.) At this moment in
time, hands publically raised in the process
of direct democratic decision making
has new, more revolutionary meaning.
It’s an icon of this historical moment. 2
While Ezawa’s concept for Hand Vote was
not a direct response to world events 3 ,
its timing at Offsite was. The decision to
mount the work on the heels of these
events was an acknowledgement that the
demand for political reform has become
an urgent issue both abroad and at home—
and that art, especially public art, has a
role to play in this discourse. If, as Collis
suggests, raising one’s hand in public is
particularly iconic today, then Ezawa’s
portrait of democracy can be seen as a
monument to the recent history of people
gathering together to effect change.
Kathleen Ritter,
Associate Curator
1 Stephen Collis, “A Show of Hands: Art and
Revolution in Public Space,” Occupy Vancouver
Voice, February 10, 2012, accessed April 5, 2012,
http://occupyvancouvervoice.com/a-show-ofhands-art-and-revolution-in-public-space/
2 Ibid.
3 A previous, much smaller (51 x 61 x 38 cm),
iteration of Hand Vote was produced for the exhibition
OURS: Democracy in the Age of Branding
at the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at
The New School, New York, October 16, 2008 to
February 1, 2009.
About
the Artist
Kota Ezawa’s artworks take the diverse
forms of digital animations, slide
projections, lightboxes, paper cut-outs,
intaglio etchings, ink drawings and wood
sculptures. Ezawa has exhibited his work
in solo exhibitions at Wexner Center
for the Arts, Columbus, OH; St. Louis
Art Museum; Charles H. Scott Gallery,
Vancouver; Artpace, San Antonio; and
the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford.
He has participated in group exhibitions
at the Vancouver Art Gallery; Museum
of Modern Art, New York; Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York; San Francisco
Museum of Modern Art; The Andy Warhol
Museum, Pittsburgh; Art Institute of
Chicago; Musée d’Art Moderne de la
Ville de Paris; as well as the 5th Seoul
International Biennale of Media Art and
the 2004 Shanghai Biennale. Ezawa lives
in San Francisco and Berlin.
CREDITS:
Kota Ezawa
Hand Vote, 2012
(front and inside images)
wood, paint
6.053 x 9.144 x 3.201 metres
site-specific installation at
Vancouver Art Gallery Offsite
PHOTOGRAPHY: Rachel Topham,
Vancouver Art Gallery
ISBN: 978-1-895442-94-6
Copyright © 2012 Vancouver Art Gallery,
the artist and the author